This invention relates generally to devices for guiding electrical cables into generally inaccessible environments, and more specifically, to electrical penetrators for carrying a plurality of electrical wires through thick walls designed to isolate a hostile environment on one side of such a wall from a safe environment on the opposite side of the wall.
Numerous requirements commonly arise where it is necessary to place instrumentation and/or various other electrical devices within an environment which is extremely hostile to human life. Hostile environments such as extremely high temperature or hazardous radiation must be isolated from adjacent areas, accessible to human operators, by specially designed walls having requisite materials and thickness to adequately safeguard the health of such operators.
Unfortunately, apertures or pathways through such walls comprising passages for needed electrical cables, simultaneously create weaknesses from a safety standpoint, namely, paths that may also act to allow the escape of some component of the aforementioned hostile environment to the exterior of the wall where operator safety might be substantially endangered. Clearly, substantial safety hazards would be incurred if such electrical conduits were fed through the bare wall structure because such bare feed-through techniques would do nothing to inhibit the escape of components of the hostile environment. In addition, bare feed-through of conduit through the wall structure per se would preclude even routine maintenance, wire modifications, and additions which may be needed as electrical instrumentation or apparatus requirements inside the hostile environment change.